With the news that NDP leader Jack Layton passed away this morning, it's natural that a lot of the coverage has dealt with his role in leading the NDP to their historic election triumph this past May. But for 20 years before he was the NDP leader, Layton was a leader at Toront's city council. For anyone who was born in this city after 1982, or moved here after that, we've only ever really known the city Layton helped build. The ways in which he touched the city range from concrete and steel to more subtle changes, but they're impossible to ignore. Here's a short list of some of the things I'll be remembering Layton for.

Pride, before it was cool
Back before it was an almost-consensus that Toronto mayors went to the Pride Parade, Jack Layton was a leader on pride and gay issues. In 1989 he fought to get then mayor Art Eggleton to declare "Gay and Lesbian Pride Day", getting a council resolution to try and force Eggleton's hand on the matter. He led the funding of HIV/AIDS programs from the city in 1987, which was still very early in the history of the outbreak in North America. If Toronto is known even a little bit because of its motto, "diversity our strength", Layton did more than his part to make it so.

A safer place for women
Jack Layton was a founder of the White Ribbon Campaign, an effort to get men to speak out against violence towards women. One of the co-founders, Michael Kaufman*, remembers how Layton helped save the campaign early in its history—by offering to mortgage the house he and Olivia Chow shared so that the campaign could pay its bills. The first office for the White Ribbon Campaign was the bedroom of now-councillor Mike Layton. Nobody doubts Layton's role in getting the WRC off the ground.

Bike infrastructure, everywhere
If you've ever locked a bike to one of Toronto's ring-and-post stands, thank Jack Layton. Layton, working with designer David Dennis, popularized the ring and post fixture, the first of which was installed in 1985. Layton always claimed the initial design happened on a bar napkin (something Dennis denied) but that wasn't the only way Layton made the city bike-friendly. He fought to get bikes allowed on the TTC, and created the city's first cycling committee—working outside of council at the beginning, until the city officially recognized their work.

A greener city
The number of ways Layton brought environmental awareness to the city are hard to keep track of. He helped found the Toronto Atmospheric Fund with money from the sale of city lands. While right-wing critics have panned the TAF as a "slush fund", the reality is it's had a profound impact on the environmental footprint of this city, from helping to start massive city successes like Enwave, or the investments in wind energy throughout the province. Layton's advocacy for bike lanes was just part of his belief that a greener Toronto was possible, and necessary.

Putting poverty and homelessness on the city's radar
As one reporter put it on CBC today, when Jack Layton helped open the first food bank in Toronto they had to explain to reporters what a food bank was. Layton was one of the city's champions for the poor and homeless, working through the 1990s to try and develop a social safety net as other levels of government cut back. He worked with the amalgamated Toronto's first mayor Mel Lastman on an advisory committee on homelessness, and his passion sometimes got in the way of his political program: he was seen to have hurt the NDP's chances in the 2004 election when he blamed Prime Minister Paul Martin for social cuts that, Layton said, had killed homeless people.

Putting Toronto, and all cities, on the national agenda
This one wasn't as city councillor, but it was one of the moments that changed the NDP from a mere appendage in Parliament, and also broke the wall that Ottawa had built in front of money for cities. If you can turn your mind back to 2005, the fate of Paul Martin's government hung in the balance in Ottawa, and Jack Layton had a deal ready to save the Liberal government from losing a confidence vote in the house: in exchange for some NDP priorities, Layton and his party would support the Liberals. One of those priorities was $4.6 billion for mass transit and affordable housing. That funding didn't survive the next election that brought the Harper Conservatives to power in Ottawa, but federal money has flowed to cities under Harper in other ways—though, as Layton would always say, never enough. Nevertheless, the 2005 budget deal was just one of the ways that Jack Layton made Toronto issues in to national ones by championing cities across the country.